Line P Program

Ocean Station Papa,
situated at 50°N, 145°W, was operated as an ocean weather station
starting in December 1949.
At that time, the weatherships were occupying Station Papa,
and they kept doing so until 1981.
After the withdrawal of the weatherships in
1981 the Line P/Station P Program was taken over by the
Institute of Ocean Sciences from Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO).
A complete history of the program is available.

The program has been modified many times over the years. Nowadays there are three
Line P cruises per year, generally in February, June, and August.
Many collaborators from different institutions and universities
are involved in Line P although the core work is still managed
and coordinated by DFO.

Since there is a high demand for participation to the cruises, a list of future cruises
participants is maintained. This allows people to make arrangements for still obtaining samples from a cruise if another participant is willing to help.
Map, list of stations and sampling: The Line P
program is made of two parts: monitoring and research.
For the monitoring aspect of the program, a set of standard sampling
depths and variables is being accomplished on every cruise.

Another way to create collaboration with other scientists and put all
results together is to attend the annual Line P workshop.
The Line P workshop is held in March of every year and includes
two types of presentations: results from past cruises and proposed
research for future cruises. Usually these talks all happen during
the first day. There is a second day to the workshop for discussions
about cruise planning for the coming year. The workshop is open to all
scientists, but please contact the Line P coordinator if you wish to
participate in the coming workshop and haven't received the invitation
email by January.

This website is based on "cruise by cruise" pages.
Unfortunately the Line P data are not in a database at the moment.
For the cruises prior to and including 2006, the data distribution
is not very user-friendly. Hopefully these cruises will eventually
be converted to the newer format.
The cruises from 2007 are composed of common fields.
Taking cruise 2011-27 as an example, these fields include:

In this table are listed all the events that took place during the
cruise along with the station name, position, date and time, and the sampling that was performed.
The sampling information contains a direct link to that specific data file.

of Temperature, Salinity, Sigma-t and
Dissolved Oxygen (DO) as well as their anomalies
(except for DO) along Line P are also available for every cruise.
The present anomalies are calculated against the 1956-1991 averages.
Most recent averages - 1980 - 2010 - are in the process of
being computed and once these are available, new anomalies will be re-calculated.